This is an article from shortly after Osama Bin Laden was killed.
The official story is that the Navy Seal team took the body somewhere in Afghanistan where it could be positively identified. Then, while on board an aircraft carrier, Bin Laden was given a Muslim funeral and his body thrown into the ocean.
The Pentagon claims that this was done in order to respect Muslim tradition and because they did not want the body to be buried somewhere on land where other extremists would be able to build a temple.
There are multiple reasons why the body can be considered of value. For example, interested parties might need very hard evidence of Bin Laden’s dead, with a ‘trusted’ test result made abroad not being enough. And also because of the body’s historical value and its value as a collectible (as bad as that sounds).
So, if the US is faced with two options:
(1) Bury the body at sea
(2) Lie about burying the body at sea
Option (2) would give them every benefit of (1), but they keep the body and its associated value. Since there is no possible way to disprove the claim of a body being thrown into the ocean, other than finding the body and identifying it, it is quite an easy lie.
The conspiracy theory is that those in charge of making this kind of decisions in the US would chose to lie in situations where it will optimize the outcome, and that they have done this in this case.
As a ‘conspiracy’, it is part of the larger topic of trusting the government and those in power. Will those in power tell the truth when an unfalsifiable lie will lead to a better outcome?
There’s several ones about bin Laden death, probably the one linked to another one, that Osama never stopped being CIA agent (this i could believe as in topic) and they killed him much earlier to quiet him, then used the chase for dead man as excuse to do more imperialism.
Just reminded me of William Blum’s “Rogue State”. Osama bin Laden said that all Amerikans should read it to understand the terrifying gravity of their Amerikan empire. When questioned about bin Laden’s support for his book, Blum said
“I was quite surprised and even shocked and amused when I found out what he’d said,” Blum commented. “I was glad. I knew it would help the book’s sales and I was not bothered by who it was coming from. If he shares with me a deep dislike for certain aspects of US foreign policy, then I’m not going to spurn any endorsement of the book by him. I think it’s good that he shares those views and I’m not turned off by that.” On the Bin Laden endorsement, Blum stated, “This is almost as good as being an Oprah book.” In an interview on MSNBC Countdown, he said: “Basically it’s US foreign policy which creates anti-American terrorists. It’s the things we do to the world. It’s not, as the White House tells us, that they hate our freedom and democracy. That’s just propaganda.”
(I also heavily recommend the book, although as an Amerikan who already knew that the empire was run by… evil, evil people - so vile and depraved that I can’t help but return to idealistic moralism when I think of them - my brain was sort of shattered after reading it. The barbarism of the Amerikan state far surpasses any historical or contemporary villain, from the Spartans to the Nazis. Maybe even cumulatively from then to now. If every Amerikan could get their hands on this book and actually read it, the empire would collapse tomorrow. I’m convinced.)
What’s this one about?
This is an article from shortly after Osama Bin Laden was killed.
The official story is that the Navy Seal team took the body somewhere in Afghanistan where it could be positively identified. Then, while on board an aircraft carrier, Bin Laden was given a Muslim funeral and his body thrown into the ocean.
The Pentagon claims that this was done in order to respect Muslim tradition and because they did not want the body to be buried somewhere on land where other extremists would be able to build a temple.
There are multiple reasons why the body can be considered of value. For example, interested parties might need very hard evidence of Bin Laden’s dead, with a ‘trusted’ test result made abroad not being enough. And also because of the body’s historical value and its value as a collectible (as bad as that sounds).
So, if the US is faced with two options:
(1) Bury the body at sea
(2) Lie about burying the body at sea
Option (2) would give them every benefit of (1), but they keep the body and its associated value. Since there is no possible way to disprove the claim of a body being thrown into the ocean, other than finding the body and identifying it, it is quite an easy lie.
The conspiracy theory is that those in charge of making this kind of decisions in the US would chose to lie in situations where it will optimize the outcome, and that they have done this in this case.
As a ‘conspiracy’, it is part of the larger topic of trusting the government and those in power. Will those in power tell the truth when an unfalsifiable lie will lead to a better outcome?
There’s several ones about bin Laden death, probably the one linked to another one, that Osama never stopped being CIA agent (this i could believe as in topic) and they killed him much earlier to quiet him, then used the chase for dead man as excuse to do more imperialism.
Just reminded me of William Blum’s “Rogue State”. Osama bin Laden said that all Amerikans should read it to understand the terrifying gravity of their Amerikan empire. When questioned about bin Laden’s support for his book, Blum said
(I also heavily recommend the book, although as an Amerikan who already knew that the empire was run by… evil, evil people - so vile and depraved that I can’t help but return to idealistic moralism when I think of them - my brain was sort of shattered after reading it. The barbarism of the Amerikan state far surpasses any historical or contemporary villain, from the Spartans to the Nazis. Maybe even cumulatively from then to now. If every Amerikan could get their hands on this book and actually read it, the empire would collapse tomorrow. I’m convinced.)